Russ Trambo wiped the folds of his neck with a handkerchief soaked in ice water and gazed wearily up at the young reporter. Outside the newsroom window of WNRB-TV the hotels and casinos of Las Vegas were baking nicely in a midafternoon temperature of 107 degrees. Across the street a faulty flickering neon sign (wedd ngs while-u-wa t) was trying wanly to compete with the hard desert sunlight.
"What are they, Jesus freaks?"
"No idea. Some of them have shaved heads and black robes and beads and bells and stuff. They're coming in old cars, trucks, buses and heading up highway ninety-three." Jack Chang rested his knuckles on the desk, his lean sallow face alight. "Give me a crew, Russ. We can sell this to the networks for sure."
"What the hell is up ninety-three except a lot of nothing?" Russ Trambo asked with a grimace. "Where are they going?"
"I asked a couple, of them and they didn't seem to know." Jack Chang flipped open his notepad. "They kept on about 'Boomy Bap' or something that sounded like it. There's nothing like that on the map."
Russ Trambo propped his double chin in the palm of his hand, mechanically wiping the back of his neck with the now-lukewarm handkerchief. " 'Boomy Bap.' What the fuck is that? Is it the heat or am I going crazy?"
"Maybe it's the end of the world," the young reporter suggested with a grin. "You know, these religious nuts? Keep gathering year after year, waiting for the end, prophesying doomsday or whatever. Nothing ever happens, so they put it off till next year."
"Hey now," the editor said, a light bulb flashing on in his brain. "The Atomic Energy Commission's nuke test site is up there--and so is the Nellis Air Force Missile Range. Maybe it's a protest demo. Did any of them mention something like that?"
Jack Chang shook his head. "Like I say, they told me it was a pilgrimage and just kept on repeating 'Boomy Bap, Boomy Bap' like it was some kind of incantation."
"Wait a second. 'Boomy.' Could that be a religious reference to an explosion, a nuclear blast?" Russ Trambo wadded the handkerchief into a damp ball and tossed it on the desk. "Okay, why not, nothing else is going down except a couple of routine homicides." Jack Chang picked up the phone to get his crew together, grumbled to himself, "if it is the fucking end of the world, why can't we have a goddam ice age instead?"
From long experience Sturges knew that it wasn't the act itself that presented problems but what happened afterward. If the act could be accomplished quickly, quietly, and without fuss (depending on method, as yet undetermined), he would simply walk away and vanish in the crowd. Though he didn't like working in crowds, too many unpredictable factors. His preferred
He was soberly dressed in a dark gray, business suit with a fine pink stripe outlining the lapels and cuffs. Similarly conservative was the soft black vinyl hat, which he wore to hide his spiky blond crew cut. Nothing he could do to disguise his six feet four or his 210-pound frame or his fifty-four-inch chest; but there were plenty of big men around and he didn't feel conspicuous. Anyway, nobody ever remembered faces at airports and his would be one among thousands.
He carried two items of hand luggage: a slim flat black attache case and a matching camera case slung around his neck. The attache case contained what he termed his "close" methods. Hypodermic. Capsules. Cigarettes.
If he could get close to his victim, say next to him in a line of people or behind him on an escalator, the hypo shot was easily delivered through the fake index finger of the black glove, his own hand clenched inside working the plunger.
The tiny beadlike capsules dissolved instantly in hot or cold liquids, so again this depended on whether he could get near enough to slip one into the victim's drink.
The cigarettes, a popular low-tar brand, were a favorite method because the victim could smoke one all the way down without suspecting a thing and ten minutes later would be stone-cold dead of an embolism --by which time Sturges would be clear of the vicinity and going blamelessly about his'business.
Concealed in the camera case a gas-powered ejector dart, effective at up to twenty-five feet, could penetrate the thickest clothing and kill in under two minutes. He'd used it twice before and it was absolutely dependable. No need even to pretend to be taking a photograph: There were two viewing and aiming positions, one from above, which meant he could be fiddling with the camera, pretending to adjust it, and line up his victim through the target viewfinder.
